We were gathered at a spot in front of the open hanger, led off one by one, and brought to a tent. There they cut off our beards and shaved our heads. At least they would no longer be able to drag me around by the hair, I thought.

This is essential reading.
Five Years of My Life. An Innocent Man in Guantanamo by Murat Kurnaz. Published by Palgrave Macmillan. Murat Kurnaz will be speaking at an event for Amnesty International on April 28 in London and May 8 in Belfast. Please visit www.amnesty.org for further details.

I give him a lift with the old unit, down the stairs and into his van.

When we return to the upper room where the work is going on there is a huge hole in the outer wall where the window used to be. It’s cold outside, and outside is inside now. Kevin rubs his hands together and I smile, knowing what he means.

“You begin in the cold,” I tell him, “and gradually shut it out as the job progresses.”

“Yes.”

Pause.

“There’s an old French story,” he says. “The wood warms you three times. When you chop it; when you bring it inside; and finally, when you burn it in the stove.”

“In Solzhenitsyn’s novel,” I tell him, “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” the prisoners march for ever to get to the Gulag, eventually stopping in an open plane where there is nothing but the howling of wolves and a wind and snow-covered waste-land as far as the eye can see. And then they have to set about building the camp that will house them so they may survive another day.”

*

A statement from Rolls Royce:

“In view of the situation in Burma, Rolls-Royce has decided to cease all business with that country. The Company is immediately returning two engines to Myanmar Airways which were awaiting overhaul at one of our UK facilities and we will terminate the contract for future repair work.
Rolls-Royce does also have contractual commitments with a Singapore-based operator who, in turn, leases an aircraft to a Burmese airline. Action is in hand to terminate this contract also and it is anticipated that this involvement will be terminated by early November 2007.
At that point Rolls-Royce will have no further involvement in Burma and will not be seeking any further business.”

*

The American Army, Navy and Air Force unwittingly advertised for recruits on GLEE.com, a website for gays.

When informed by USA Today that they were advertising on a website for gay professionals, recruiters expressed surprise.

“This is the first I’ve heard about it,” said Maj. Michael Baptista, advertising branch chief for the Army National Guard. “We didn’t knowingly advertise on that particular website,” which he said does not “meet the moral standards” of the military.

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In The Guardian, John Keenan wonders why there is still so much respect for a burnt-out homophobic misogynist?

Only in America in the 1960s and early 70s could a gun-worshipping, atavistic, pill-popping paranoid like (Hunter S.)Thompson come across as an innocent. With a swindler in the White House, a depraved war being fought for futile reasons, and the American political system infected to the marrow, Thompson appeared to many young people to embody not so much freak power as common sense.

Terror of Flight 101: An echo of Orwell.
The flight leaves Heathrow airport’s Terminal Four, every Wednesday bearing the number KQ101. The echo of George Orwell’s Room 101 is unhappily appropriate. On this Kenya Airways jet, many asylum-seekers’ worst nightmares do come true. KQ101 is the deportation flight chartered by the British Government to return refugees to Africa. According to human rights groups, this flight carries out the most Africa-bound removals of unsuccessful asylum applicants to the UK. It has also become a flight that has attracted allegations of abuse by guards. From Nairobi the detainees are flown all over Africa where they are handed over to security and immigration authorities.

An investigation by The Independent concludes that many of the deportees suffer assault and racial abuse at the hands of the guards who accompany them.

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Delocator is an open-source site which finds independent cafes and coffee shops in the UK, based on postcode. Useful if you’d rather avoid corporates and help circulate money in your local community while maintaining a diverse cafe culture.

The sister site in the USA is: delocator.net.

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We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag. And so, by the Providences of God – and the phrase is the government’s, not mine – we are a World Power. - Mark Twain on our nation-building in the Philippines.

Thanks to Undernews for this one.

Early in 2005, a man in Northern China confessed to a murder that had taken place ten years previously. Reports say that he gave a detailed description of the scene where he claimed to have raped and then killed a young woman. On the strength of the confession, the judicial authorities accepted the man’s guilt.The problem was, they had already executed another man for the murder. Nie Shubin, a young farmer, had been found guilty of the rape and murder in 1995 after reportedly being tortured in police custody. His family are now seeking official compensation. But of course, nothing will bring Nie back.
In a separate case, Tang Xingshan was found guilty of murdering his wife in 1987. He insisted he was innocent and claimed that he had only confessed because he was severely beaten during the interrogations. His pleas were ignored and he was executed in 1989.In June 2006, Teng’s wife – the alleged murder victim – reappeared. Alive and unharmed. The murder for which Teng had been executed had never taken place.

The above is quoted from the literature of Amnesty International. China is preparing for the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. The Chinese authorities are particularly sensitive right now about how they are regarded by the international community. I support Amnesty International’s campaign to reform and ultimately abolish China’s use of the death penalty.

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Neocons on a cruise. Johann Hari, in The Independent, sets sail with America’s swashbuckling neocons:

From time to time, National Review – the bible of American conservatism – organises a cruise for its readers. I paid $1,200 to join them. The rules I imposed on myself were simple: If any of the conservative cruisers asked who I was, I answered honestly, telling them I was a journalist. Mostly, I just tried to blend in – and find out what American conservatives say when they think the rest of us aren’t listening.

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This sounds like an interesting read; Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. The story of a woman who decided to reverse the assumptions and choices in her life and become someone closer to the person she wanted to be. Starting off by eating her way around Rome . . .